Poll – Arabs prefer Ahmadinejad over Obama

Last month, Brookings Institute released results of a poll conducted by Professor Shibley Telhami of Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institute – in co-operation with Zogby and the University of Maryland. The participants from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates expressed they’re more supportive of Iranian President Dr. Ahmadinejad’s views on the Middle East than US President Barack Obama.

Professor Shibley Telhami pointed out that the results of “the poll present problem for the US, which has counted on Arabs seeing Iran as a threat – maybe even bigger one than Israel”.

“According to our polling, a majority of Arabs do not believe Iran’s claim that it is merely pursuing a peaceful nuclear program. But an overwhelming majority believe that Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons and should not be pressured by the international community to curtail its program. Even more telling, a majority of those polled this year say that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, the outcome would be positive for the Middle East. In 2009, only 29% of respondents viewed that as a positive.

To be sure, the results varied from country to country, with a significant majority in Egypt viewing a nuclear Iran positively, while a majority in the United Arab Emirates viewed such an outcome negatively. However, the trend in the past year is striking.

The shortest path to understanding this turn in Arab public opinion is to examine Arab views of American foreign policy in the Middle East. In the early months of the Obama administration (spring 2009), our polling found that a remarkable 51% of those surveyed expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East, a stark contrast to nearly a decade of gloom that preceded Obama’s election. A little over a year later, however, the number of optimists had dropped to only 16%, with 63% expressing pessimism. This pessimism, more than any other issue, explains the turn in Arab attitudes toward Iran. Arabs tend to view Iran largely through the prism of American and Israeli policies,” wrote Professor Shibley Telhami.

Now, before some ‘Iranophobe’ idiot call Professor Shibley Telhami an ‘anti-Semite’, let me explain who are his employers and his partners – because I bet all of them were also shocked by the results of the poll as much as the ‘Iranophobe’ idiot.

Brookings Institute’s president Strobe Talbott is a former director of foreign services at the Jewish TIME magazine. Professor John L. Thompton, the president of Goldman Sachs, also worked for Brookings and so did Teresa Heinz, Senator John Kerry’s wife. It seems that all members of Brookings Administration Council are approved by the Zionist think tank Council on Foreign CFR), headed by Zionist Jew Dr. Richard Haass, Ben Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser.

The analyses prepared by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, are made from American and Zionist perspectives. It is directed by Dr. Martin S. Indyk, a British-born Jew and former American ambassador to Tel Aviv. He is also co-founder of the WINEP, a think tank of Likud. It was name after his sponsor, Zionist Jew millionaire Haim Saban, co-owner of Fox TV.

The Zogby International was founded by two Zogby brothers, John and James, born in NY State to Lebanese Catholic parents.Dr. John Zogby is a regular contributor to the Israeli propaganda outlet, The Huffington Post. He also writes weekly column for Forbes com. and US News and World’s Report.

One of the ‘Iranophone’, David Pollock, a senior fellow at the Jewish think tank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) – took an ‘anti-Semite’ shot at Shibley Telhami on September 16, 2010. Dr. Mahmoud Reza Golshanpazhooh has refuted David Pollock’s allegations against the ‘Friends of Israel’ behind the poll here.